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“Mom, there is wrestling sign ups tomorrow. Can girls wrestle mom?”, my daughter asked.
“Umm technically they can wrestle”, said my wife with a vague nervous tone (you could tell my wife didn’t want to necessarily encourage the idea).
My daughter then turns to me and asks, “Dad can I wrestle?”
Let’s pause for a moment. First let me say I love wrestling and I am not talking about WWE wrestling. Ok maybe I like that wrestling a little bit but that is a different story. My first introduction to wrestling was when I was 10 years old. I then resumed wrestling in high school and a little in college. Sometimes I think the only reason I did ok in school was to make sure I had the grades to wrestle.
As for girls participating in wrestling, I first saw this trend begin to take hold nearly 20 years ago when I was in high school. I was curious to see how much girls wrestling had grown since I was in high school.
I will admit it was a bit unexpected for my daughter to randomly take an interest in wrestling. I never really thought that my daughter would be interested in such a thing, but then again my daughter never ceases to surprise me in one way or another.
Let’s resume the conversation.
“Are you sure you want to wrestle? Wrestling can be a bit rough.”, I said.
“Yes dad I am sure. Can I wrestle?”, she asked.
“I am ok with it you really want to.”, I replied.
It was settled. My daughter was going to participate in wrestling. What is funny to me is that I was completely ok with it. And even if I wasn’t ok with it I didn’t want to prevent my daughter from doing something just because she is a girl. What kind of dad would I be if I didn’t support her in this interest? Don’t answer that.
My son on the other hand was a bit more cautious about the idea.
“Son, do you want to wrestle too?”, I asked.
“No way, that is dangerous.” he said.
“Son, you understand that that there are no ladders, no cages, no punching, and no kicking right?”
“Ya, I know.”, he said.
“So, do you want to wrestle son?”
“No way dad. I am going to get hurt if I wrestle.”, he said.
Truthfully I didn’t just want my daughter to wrestle and my son on the sidelines watching. With that being said I didn’t take no for an answer. I kept reassuring my son that I would be there with him and I wouldn’t let him get hurt. I told him I would teach him the moves and would go to his practices. I took him to my computer and pulled up some YouTube videos of 5 year old kids wrestling. The videos did little to persuade him, however my daughter enjoyed watching them.
As I put my son to be I could tell he still had anxiety about the whole idea of wrestling.
“Do I have to wrestle dad?”
“You think about it tonight and we can talk about it in the morning.”, I said.
I said goodnight to my daughter, we said our prayers and then I returned to my son’s room to give him a hug. I mentioned something about wrestling and he quickly responded, “We are going to talk about it tomorrow ok?”
“Yes son I am sorry, we will talk about it tomorrow.”
The next morning we didn’t really talk about wrestling. The kids got ready for school, had breakfast and I dropped them off. It was only when I picked up my son from school did he have a change of heart about wrestling as he discovered a friend of his in his class would also be wrestling.
“Dad, how long before wrestling practice?” He asked.
“You decided you want to wrestle?”
“Ya, and my friend is going to wrestle too.” He said.
I must say that as I write this we are into the second week of wrestling and I have learned a great deal about my children and how I think wrestling has already taught them so much(and I am not just referring to the wrestling itself). The experience has made me aware of some things about my children that I might not have noticed so clearly but that will have to wait until the next post.
I will say that I think it is funny that I am less worried about my daughter wrestling then my son wrestling (and my wife shares these feelings as well).
Would you allow your daughter to participate in wrestling or do you think it is a sport just for boys?
Loved reading this, it’s cool the way you encouraged both your kids to follow the paths that they wanted regarding one of your passions. I’ve never really thought about the possibility of our son wrestling, mainly because he’s six months old and really needs to work on things like overall coordination, sitting up unaided and walking first 🙂 Even once he’s got the hang of those things, I’m just not sure if kids here in the UK actually take up the sport at clubs all that much. I know that lots of folk were big into WWF in the 90s here but am not sure what the general popularity of wrestling (or participation levels) are like here in the UK.
I wasn’t sure what the participation was in the state of Washington but it is actually pretty impressive. I came from wrestling in California where it was pretty popular and I didn’t know what to expect after moving to Washington. I was even more impressed to see a significant amount of girls wrestling. Thanks for the comment Jonathan.